Brunette Love Circles
by One On Infinity
Summary: Cartman decides to help his quirky classmate Heidi capture her crush's heart. But things with Cartman are never how they seem, and Heidi is in for way more than she bargained for. [HeidiCraig, CartmanWendy, CartmanHeidi]
1. It Began With A LifeSaver

_Hey everyone. If you're reading this then you have decided to take a peek at my new fiction, __Brunette Love Circles__. That's cool. Just make sure that if you take the time to read it, you spend another 30 seconds or whatever at the end to review. None of this "I'm going to fave-it but not critique it" business! I want your input!_

_Because that, you know, makes me a happy panda._

_Anyway, this is ultimately Heidi/Cartman, although the story is very heavily based on Heidi/Craig and Cartman/Wendy._

_You'll see why._

_Written from Heidi's POV or third-person (in scenes where Heidi isn't present)._

_Thanks for giving it a chance, anyway. Hope it pleases. _

_Disclaimer: Don't own South Park._

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_**Brunette Love Circles**_

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_It Began With A LifeSaver_

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I don't remember much from kindergarten. A little bit, but it's mostly in clips, like watching a SportsCenter highlight from the Rockies game. All the unimportant stuff gets cut away, and only the game influencing plays get broadcasted. Not that there are too many life-altering experiences in kindergarten, but still.

I do remember one thing vividly though. It happened about halfway through the year. We were all sitting around, talking about whatever we talked about back then, when Ms. Somers walked in; Ms. Somers being the teacher. Obviously.

Ms. Somers was young and happy then. She was also completely stupid. _I _realized this, and I was about 5. Anyway, she had blonde hair, eyes that were the exact blue of Scotch painter's tape, and she was thin. I saw her a few months ago, and it looked like half a century had passed between then and now. She's scruffy, overweight, has bloodshot eyes and her yellowed skin sort of hangs off her like she bought it at Wal-Mart two sizes too big. Probably from all the cigarettes. I'm pretty sure she's always been a heavy smoker.

She sat down on her desk, apparently too good for a chair, and tapped her fuchsia nails against the white Chiclets in her mouth that were also known as teeth. That was another thing I noticed when I saw her. Her teeth are yellow now.

When she spoke, us kids had a way of paying attention. Her voice was real throaty, easy to just listen to. So when she started to talk, our conversations halted.

"Okay class, today I have a special activity, which…" she paused for dramatic tension. We were too young to realize that we had to act excited. "… involves candy!" she finished, throwing her hands in the air. _That_ got our attention, and we cheered like the Broncos had just scored the winning touchdown in overtime.

She walked around the room slowly, handing each one of us a LifeSavers candy. Handing out hard candy to 5 year olds? I said she wasn't too bright.

I received my piece, admiring the pretty red color. Ms. Somers started to talk to us again. "Now, this year we have been learning about how to be a good friend, right?"

"Yes, Ms. Somers," was the collective answer.

"And we've also been working on how to spell, correct?"

"Yes, Ms. Somers."

"Well, today, we're going to mix it up! Since you've all made so many friends, you're going to pick one to give your candy to! But in order to give it to them, you're going to have to write their name down on a piece of paper. I'll go around collecting them all, and then hand back all the candies you've received. Now," her voice lowered, as if she was giving us some valuable information, "it's going to be a secret who you give your candy to and who you get it from. So once you're finished writing, put your heads down. Okay?"

"Yes, Ms. Somers."

"Alright! So get out some paper and a pencil and write down those names!"

This proved to be a huge enigma to me. Pick a friend? I had no idea who to pick. Next to me, I heard Kyle Broflovski and Stan Marsh whispering.

"How do you spell Kyle?"

"K-y-l-e," Kyle rattled off.

Stan's pencil hesitated over his paper. "Which one is the K again?"

Kyle rolled his eyes. "Let's just switch candy now," he said. I watched the two boys, Kyle's eyes lighting up as he saw that Stan had given him a green one.

I stared down at my own blank paper. _Pick a friend. Write a name. _But I couldn't do it. I felt that by picking one of the girls who I had made friends with, I would be somehow betraying the others. So I just slipped my candy into my pocket, left the page empty, and put my head on my desk, covering my eyes. Ms. Somers didn't even notice that there was no candy on my desk to collect.

It felt like forever, but realistically it was probably only 5 minutes or so. I was so excited. Even though I couldn't pick a friend to give a candy to, I figured no one else would have such a problem. I couldn't wait to see how many candies I would get. I even imagined having the most out of everyone. I would share them, I assured myself, but it would feel so good to know that I had so many friends.

Ms. Somers said to lift up our heads and see what we had. And I remember not a single LifeSaver had been left on my desk.

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Fast-forward a bit. Like, about 11 years, a bit. Not much had changed, really. We were all older, had raging hormones, were a little more mature (emphasis on _little_), and spent most of our days in South Park High instead of South Park Elementary. That was pretty much it.

I was in chemistry. Of course I was in chemistry. Chemistry, the class that required the most focus, the most attention, out of all my classes, was the one class that I shared with Craig, the man of my dreams since 5th grade. Of course it was chemistry, because that's just the story of my life.

Oh, Craig. I loved him, loved him with all my mind, body, and soul. The only thing that separated us was the fact that he was taken. By Wendy, of all people. Wendy Testaburger, known for hanging on to men for obscenely long amounts of time, but so god damned sweet that people felt terrible if even a few innocent flirty exchanges took place between themselves and her love interest. Of course it was Wendy, right?

I was lab partners with Kyle, only because Stan didn't share the class with us and I didn't have a partner at the beginning of the year. Kyle's always been nice to me. He's really smart though, and I remember feeling just plain dumb on more than one occasion after I couldn't figure out in a whole class period what he could do 10 minutes.

I would constantly drift off into my own thoughts of Craig during Chemistry, and I think it began to piss Kyle off because at that point I was useless. Less than useless, even. Kyle's the kind of guy who doesn't appreciate a useless lab partner.

"Heidi," he snapped, particularly annoyed.

I broke the staring contest I was having with Craig's back and paused my thoughts of him, turning to look at Kyle through my school-issued goggles. Yup, he was mad. The frown etched across his face made that painfully clear.

"We have to finish this assignment," he said.

"I know," I replied.

"I asked you 6 times what the weight of the byproduct was," he said.

"Cool," I replied, zoning out into Craig-land, population Heidi.

"HEIDI!" he snapped.

This time it wasn't expected. It was like being shaken awake the moment you fell asleep. I jumped, sending the Bunsen burner, which was on, over the edge of the table. Bebe, who had bent down to pick up a worksheet that she had dropped, found herself the victim of the UFBB - Unidentified Flying Bunsen Burner.

She leapt up screaming. Kyle hit the emergency cutoff for the gas, but it didn't change the fact that her straightened blonde hair had caught flame. I snatched up the fire extinguisher, ripped out the pin, and doused Bebe with lots and lots of white foamy stuff.

Her hair wasn't on fire anymore at that point; she was just hysterical. She ran about yelling and pulling the burnt locks, the teacher working to calm her down. Kyle was fuming, his face an odd shade of red, and mostly everyone else was laughing at my blunder. But I had no eyes for the red-head or the rest of the class. As far as I could tell, there was only one person in the room. And that person was looking a little too pitying for my taste.

_Pity. Pity. Pity. _It was probably the worst turn of events possible, to have your crush pitying you. That meant you looked pathetic. _I _was pathetic. Or, at least, to Craig I was. And that was all that mattered.

The teacher ordered us away from the lab area and back to our desks. I slumped down in my chair, working harder than ever to gain a superpower that would enable me to become invisible, transport myself back to my room at home, or allow me to simply fly away. I found myself envying Kenny McCormick. He could kill himself in a situation such as this and then wait a few days for it to die down before he came back.

Lucky son of a bitch.

Behind me, I heard Millie whispering to Clyde. I didn't catch all of it, just "Heidi" and "retard".

Well. I leaned over and whispered loudly in Red's ear, "Can you believe that Millie's dad got caught with Liane Cartman in the lobby of his company yesterday?"

Red rolled her eyes at me. "Duh, everyone knows that," she said back, just as loudly. "I heard that after they got busted it took him 15 minutes to find his underwear." She lowered her voice so only I could understand, "But you are pretty retarded, Heidi." She smiled as I stuck my tongue out. Red was allowed to say this; she was my best friend, and they get certain privileges.

Millie, on the other hand, shut up fairly quickly. Clyde laughed under his breath. I smiled to myself, temporarily pleased.

A sharp poke in the side directed my attention back to Red, who covertly gestured over to an occupied desk three seats behind us and two to the left. "Why is he looking at you?" Red asked me.

I spun around in an extremely obvious manner, meeting Eric Cartman's gaze. He was looking at me with a half-interested expression on his pudgy face, smiling in an unsettling way when I frowned at him, cocking his left eyebrow in a sneer that displayed all the sarcasm he had built up inside him.

I turned back to Red. "I dunno," I said. "But who cares. Listen, do you think it would be a good idea to talk to Craig?"

"When?" she asked, glancing down at her nails.

"Now. Because I need him to leave with at least a neutral overall impression of me, and I'm getting the vibe that it's leaning to the negative side of the spectrum."

"Where'd you hear that?" she asked, sounding skeptical.

"_Seventeen, _obviously," I scoffed. "It said that how your crush thinks of you after you leave for an extended period of time matters most because that's the time they develop their thoughts. And if he leaves thinking I'm klutzy, that could easily manifest itself into him thinking I'm a stupid bimbo. Just like that."

"Yes, because men stop to think about their feelings so often," Red deadpanned.

"Well?" I asked again.

"By all means, I haven't seen you make a fool of yourself more about 7 minutes. It's getting to be about time."

"Alright, here goes," I decided, standing up and beginning to make my way over to Craig's desk. Red's eyes nearly bulged out of her head. "No, Heidi, I was just kidding-"

I turned my head to look at her but kept walking. See, that's the thing, I lack the ability to make good decisions. Any logical person would've stopped to turn around and chat, but me, not so much. So the fact that my foot caught a backpack that had strayed into the aisle and I somehow wound up face down on the floor shouldn't have surprised me so much.

The class erupted into a second round of laughter at my expense. Red had thrust her hands outward at the last second in an attempt to warn me of the incoming doom, and was drawing them slowly back into her body, biting her lip with a pained look on her face.

'I blame you,' I mouthed to her as I rose, trying to play it off. Clearing my throat I continued my march to Craig. I knew Red thought this was a doubly bad idea now, but I figured I might as well go through with it.

He was smiling at me as I approached, but not in a I've-just-realized-I'm-madly-in-love-with-you way. More like he was amusedly watching a toddler make a cute little embarrassment of herself in public. I was not digging the pre-school vibe, but I couldn't come off as too 'seductively sexy' or whatever to a guy in a relationship, not to mention that I was hardly on comfortable terms with him. That would be slutty, and I didn't want to be a slut either.

So I settled for the, "Uh, hi… Craig?" approach.

Super smooth.

He seemed a little puzzled as to why I'd asked 'Craig' when I clearly knew who he was. It wouldn't have done any good for him to ask me this, though, because I had no idea myself.

"Hey Heidi," he said.

At this point I realized I had nothing to say to him. There were no conversations that I was just bursting to have, and my brain had simply stopped operating, so the little part that generally produced small talk had frozen up. I stared at him, jaw moving every now and then, but other than that I did nothing.

Red groaned behind me. I knew I had to say something. _Do _something. Anything. So I said, "On Columbus Day what kind of soup do you like wearing?"

I have no idea where these types of things come from.

If he was confused before, he was flabbergasted now. If it was up to him, I would have been institutionalized. No questions asked. And I'd probably agree with him, too. I was acting like someone who was undoubtedly mentally unwell. The bell rang, and he continued to look at me as he slowly gathered his stuff. He finally replied, "I have to go to my next class…"

"Oh, of course, I'm off to the horse races myself, although the train's going to go right on past morning" I said. He gave me a concerned look before hustling out of the room.

I stood there for a few moments, doing nothing but blinking. I just stood there. It was like the truth was fighting through layers and layers of fluff and in the meantime I was just standing there, waiting. Then, it hit me like a punch in the gut. I gasped, grabbing at the roots of my hair and spinning around, facing Red, who was the one of only people left in the room.

"Oh, my God…" I exhaled slowly. Red shook her head, patting my shoulder. "Heidi, I hate to tell you this, but you can't wear appetizers." I did not find this amusing in the slightest. Red smiled a little and left. I drug myself over to my desk and sat back down, not moving. I was just thinking. "How in the hell…" I questioned softly, closing my eyes and wanting to float away again.

Something creaked in front of me. I didn't care. I didn't open my eyes. Someone coughed obnoxiously. I ignored them. A familiar voice screamed, "Look at me, air-headed tampon!" I opened my eyes.

Cartman was pissed off. Naturally. But he seemed to calm down a bit once I looked at him. His intently staring brown eyes relaxed a little bit. But not much.

"Air-headed tampon?" I asked.

"Nice to see you're forming coherent sentences," he fired back. My cheeks reddened and I closed my eyes again, sinking lower into my seat. "Not this again," he muttered, yelling, "DUMBASS!" right into my face.

I jumped a little, thoroughly annoyed.

"I couldn't help but notice that little exchange between yourself and Craig a few moments ago…" he began.

"What the hell do you want fatass?" I asked irritably.

He assumed a business-like demeanor. "Miss Heidi Turner, I come to you with a proposition…"

-o-


	2. Common Interest

_Hello again, everyone. Chapter two is here… finally. Sorry 'bout the wait, but school's been crazy. Mid-terms and all. I dread the end of the semester, let's leave it at that. So the reviews have been cool. Many thanks for the support so early on. _

_Disclaimed._

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_Common Interest_

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I rolled my eyes. "Not interested, Cartman," I said, closing the binder on my desk and placing it in the bag that was on the ground next to me. Cartman huffed impatiently, like I was wasting his time instead of it being the other way around.

Eric Cartman was, admittedly, not someone that I used many brain cells thinking about. All I really knew was that he mostly hung around with Stan, Kyle, and Kenny, for reasons that were unknown to most of the student population because as far as we all knew, they all hated him to a degree. Most people hated him to a degree, actually. Also, I knew that he was a manipulative and discriminatory bastard, as described to us several times by Kyle and occasionally others. My interaction with him throughout life had been limited, and never exceeded what had occurred back in fourth grade during one of the sleepovers I'd had with some of the girls. I still don't understand what really happened that night.

"How can you not be interested if you don't even know what it is yet?" he asked.

"Because I've gone to school with you since we were ye high," I lowered my hand to about seat-level. "And you're propositions have, since then, never been good ones."

He waved this off casually. "You've just been hearing other people's sides of the stories."

I scoffed. "As far as I'm concerned, attempted genocide is attempted genocide no matter who tells the story," I referenced to his many campaigns throughout the years to rid the world of Jews, blacks, and Muslims. To name a few.

Cartman hesitated, before pulling a face of mild annoyance. "Listen, do you want to hear this or not?"

"No," I said, standing up to leave.

"Fine," he snapped, "since you've been so successful thus far in your attempts to impress Craig, by all means, continue on without my help. The world needs more pathetic people to laugh at anyway."

"Cartman, why in the hell would I talk to _you _about anything that had to do with Craig, much less discuss ways to 'impress' him with you?" I spun around to face him. He still hadn't stood up from the desk he had taken a seat at. He was just looking at me, kind of like he had done before, the one eyebrow cocked in a way that made me feel a little stupid. I'm not sure why, that's just the feeling I got when he looked at me like that. Like he knew exactly what I was thinking and his opinion of me was less because of it.

At that moment I wanted to sit down and hear what his plan was. I wanted to know what it was, and why the hell he'd even decided to think it up. I wanted to voice my suspicions and hear the way he glossed over them like there was never a person as honest as he.

So with one last sneer I turned on my heel and stalked from the room. I didn't miss the smile that crossed his lips as I did so, and with a sinking feeling I realized I'd done exactly what he thought I would do.

I arrived at lunch feeling angry. Red observed this instantly and commented on it, "What happened?"

I shook my head, keeping my lips sealed about whatever had just taken place. I wasn't sure what to call it. An incident? A confrontation? Or just a talk?

I sat at a table near the center of the cafeteria where myself, Red, Bebe (who was not there at the moment… the chemistry incident pulsed in my mind and my face reddened), Powder, and a few others were the regulars. We weren't necessarily all best friends, that was just the way the seating had worked itself out at the beginning of the year. Some of the other girls gave me odd looks before getting back to whatever it was they had been doing or talking about before.

I glanced around the large room, my eyes falling on – who else? – Craig. But this time, I couldn't just float off into a land where it was just myself and him living happily together, because now, Wendy was there. Sweet, ever smiling Wendy, who everyone just seemed to have this unfailing love for. Bitch.

I think I was the only one who, at that point, had any sort of qualms with Wendy Testaburger. I couldn't say that I disliked her because that was absolutely not the case, although I would have loved to be able to just hate her. Maybe it wasn't impossible to hate Wendy Testaburger, but it was pretty damn hard. God knows I wasn't capable of doing anything so out of the ordinary.

Wendy was smart and pretty, just as she always had been. But there was one thing that changed about her that was major. When we were younger, Wendy had always been fairly liberal and extremely adamant about her opinions on anything, whether it be something of national importance or the lack of nutritional items on the school menu. And somewhere along the way, Wendy lost that.

Maybe her thoughts about issues were as strong and concise as ever, but you'd never really know for sure. As far as Wendy went, this in itself was a huge deal.

Wendy never spoke up about anything and never asserted her opinion at all, much less with the intensity with which she had once done. I'm sure this is what eventually made her a likeable person to everyone, this inability to express conflicting opinions with anyone.

I found it impossible to dream about Craig when Wendy was around. She was like a barrier that separated him from the rest of my brain, and I thought it was pretty damn annoying. If she was going to hang onto him for God knew how long, couldn't she at least allow us mortals our twisted fantasies? Apparently not.

Sighing in frustration, I kept my eyes roaming. Next, they landed on Cartman.

Why, why did they have to stop there? I blamed them fully for it, never mind that I supposedly had complete control over my body. Anybody could tell you differently. Sometimes parts of a person just did as they pleased.

He was sitting next to Kenny and Butters. Accompanying him at the table were the inseparable Stan and Kyle, along with Token, Clyde, and Jimmy. I had eyes for no one but Eric, though. What the hell was that bastard up to? I knew there was something there. I had no idea what, but he was planning something… maybe I'd been hanging out with Kyle too much.

At that moment, Cartman turned from his conversation with Kenny and looked straight at me. He stopped nowhere else, he looked directly over to where I was sitting, looking at me. This action stunned me and was carried out so quickly that I didn't even turn away.

So I sat there, staring and blinking, and across the room he did the same. I saw him roll his eyes and he turned back to his table of guys. I stared for a little while longer until Red shook me.

"Heidi, we're all leaving. You didn't even touch your food," she said. I nodded absently. She grimaced and leaned in toward me. "Are you still thinking about Craig?" she asked in a low whisper.

"No. Cartman," I answered honestly.

Her nose wrinkled in disgust. "Cartman? Why?" I shook my head and her frown deepened. "C'mon Heidi, what's the big secret?" she prodded.

"I just have to talk to him…" I replied. Red huffed, aggravated with my evasive answers. She left me at the suddenly empty table, and I suddenly felt like a loser.

Taking action had not been working for me that day. At all. So as I made my way over to the guys' table, I was wary of anything that I might slip on, like banana peels, some sort of liquid that would make the floor comically slippery, things of that sort. I was so focused that I knocked right into Millie who was carrying her lunch back to whatever table it was that she sat at. Luckily, everything landed on her clothes, and seeing as how _she_ was the one screaming bloody hell I managed to escape without much attention drawn to me. Relatively, anyway.

Kyle was shaking his head slowly as I arrived at the table. "Heidi…" he began.

"Can't talk chemistry now, Kyle. Cartman, can I talk to you?"

Cartman's eyes slowly moved to the scene still unfolding in the middle of the room. He blinked a few times before muttering, "Too easy," and looking back at me with a knowing smile. "Why, whatever could you need, Heidi?" he asked dumbly.

"Cartman…" he knew what I was there for.

"Um, unless you can't tell, I'm in the middle of eating. Can't you just tell me what you need here?" he asked, going back to his food.

We were drawing the attention of the other boys at the table. My face began to flush. "Cartman, what we were talking about _earlier?" _I tried not to seem to impatient.

He tapped his chin thoughtfully before looking back at me, seeming pleasantly clueless. "Why, I can't quite recall. Could you remind me what that was about? Something about you and… oh, who was it?"

"Don't push me, asshole" I seethed. "Just come on."

The other boys were openly listening, not even pretending to be doing anything else. Jeez, at least girls had the decency to act like they were doing something when they eavesdropped… although Cartman _was _doing this particularly to embarrass me. I stole a glance at Kyle, who had suspicion written clearly across his features as he bore holes into Cartman's skull with his intensely green eyes. "Heidi, I already told you –" Cartman began.

"NOW!" I nearly screamed.

"Alright, alright. Christ, can't a man eat around here?" Cartman grumbled as he stood up. As we left the area, I felt the other boys' eyes following us. I turned and gave them a glare; they all snapped back to their food.

"Did they think I didn't notice them all _staring _at me?" I mumbled. Cartman, beside me, nodded.

"Men are amazingly imperceptive. Unless you directly address them they'll think they're getting away with being stealthy listeners."

I turned on him. "And what was that shit back there, anyway?"

He smiled. "Just making you squirm."

"You get a perverse pleasure out of that, don't you?"

"Yes."

The honesty there surprised me, and I was kept in silence for a while. Although technically I had gone and fetched Cartman, he was the one directing us to wherever it was we would be meeting and I followed along blindly. Almost like he'd… _expected_ that I'd change my mind…

God dammit.

Eventually we reached a storage closet that I'd never realized was there. Cartman reached for the doorknob and opened the door. I had half expected it to be locked. Inside, there were some shelves with basic supplies on them, like poster board and chalk for the classrooms, pushed up against the walls. There was an empty space in the middle of the room. Everything was coated with a thick layer of dust.

"I never even knew this room was here," I said, running my finger across a dust laden shelf.

"That's the point. Even the faculty forgot that it was here. Perfect place to have uninterrupted meetings," - Meet-_ings_? As in plural? - "I'm assuming that you've changed your mind about my offer."

I sighed. "Yes, Cartman, I want to hear what you've come up with. More out of curiosity," I added.

"Pretty simple, actually," Cartman said. This caught my attention, for no other reason than I'd learned that Cartman loves to add grandeur to all his schemes. 'Simple' was unusual. "I want to help you with getting Craig to break up with Wendy and go out with you."

I winced at the way he put it. "I don't necessarily want him to break up with Wendy…"

He looked at me in an amused/quizzical fashion. "You want to share him with her?" he asked.

I shook my head violently. "No, that's not what I meant-"

"Then what did you mean?" he asked sharply. I hesitated, then shook my head. He grunted, aggravated. "If you're going to attempt to smash the most well-liked girl in school's heart in order to take her boyfriend from her, you might as well own up to it," he said harshly. I didn't argue.

"Why?" I asked after a time of silence.

"Why what?" he asked back.

"Why do you want to do this?" I clarified. He shrugged.

"Can't I just feel like helping you out? I feel like I don't do much for people, and I see someone who is obviously in need of a little of –"

"Ah-hah!" I shouted triumphantly. "I knew it! I knew you'd give me some bullshit line like that! You just want to use this as some excuse to pull some kind of scheme of your own… oh, I _knew _it!" I felt oddly uplifted, like this was confirming that there was no strange reasoning behind all this like I'd feared. Cartman was just up to his old shit. All was right in the world.

… so why did I feel let down at the same time?

Cartman cleared his throat. "Much as I would love that to be the cause behind my gesture, I'm afraid you've got me wrong there."

"I – what?" Well, so much for that theory. The world wasn't right after all, it seemed. "Well then why… what are you…?"

"There's a motive behind this of course," he said. "I wouldn't do this if there wasn't something in it for me. And I assure you, there is most definitely something in it for me."

"WHAT?" I asked, exasperated.

He shrugged. "Wendy," he said simply.

For a minute, the universe ceased to exist. It was just me, Cartman, and the fact that not even he was immune to whatever it was that drew everyone to Wendy. I was completely blown away. I mean, in a way it was obvious. It made perfect sense. He wanted Wendy and Craig to break up because he wanted half of that relationship. I wanted the other half, so of course I was the correct person to help him out with the whole dirty affair. It was this common interest that would inevitably make us partners.

I never would've thought for a second that Cartman could be attracted to Wendy, though. That just didn't add up. I mean… she was _Wendy. _And he was Cartman. Those two weren't a match made in heaven, hell, or anywhere in between. They were just Wendy. And Cartman. It didn't even make much sense to include them in the same sentence.

Part of me was jealous. I couldn't deny that. Well, I could, and I would to anyone else, but I was. Here Wendy was, taking the guy of my dreams, and my only hope of getting him was to accept the help of a fellow Wendy-lover. There was just something twisted in that. Or at least to me there was. Could Wendy just stay away from anyone? Seriously, the girl needed to be stopped. And a small part of me… I guess a small part of me was just hoping that Cartman was helping me out because of _me. _Not Wendy, not anyone else, just me. Was that too ridiculous to fathom?

Apparently so.

I smiled, and I hoped that it didn't betray any of the bitterness. "Another follower of Testaburger, eh?" I said. He studied my face intently. After a while I began to color. "Christ, I'm not a textbook," I muttered after his staring didn't let up.

"No… much more interesting than a textbook," he muttered, and finally drew his eyes from my face. I sighed in relief. "So do we have a deal?" he asked.

"What… exactly is the deal?" I countered. It was a legitimate question, I thought.

"I help you break up Craig and Wendy and get you in with Craig. Really there's no work on your part as far as helping me get what I want," he gave me a once-over, "you wouldn't help me much with that."

I frowned. "Which would surprise you more – if I said yes or no?"

He raised one of his eyebrows without immediately replying.

"God dammit stop with that look!" I said accusingly. He laughed.

"It doesn't matter what would surprise me because I know what you're answer is going to be. Believe me, we'd both be better off if you were to say no to this. But I know you won't. You can't, and you know it. So we'll both come out worse off for it, but we'll have what we want and the rest probably won't matter."

His answer was puzzling. Come out worse off? I didn't know how he came up with that. I didn't want to know. And as much as I'd have loved to reject him and stalk out with my pride, he was right. I couldn't. It was impossible.

"Well, if you already know the answer," I began, "start dishing out the plan. I'm sure you've already put a terrifying amount of thought into it."

Cartman shook his head. "Not yet. I just needed to know that you were in on this." He turned to leave.

"What? When are we going to… what are you…?"

He waved off my startled blabber. "Don't worry. I've got it under control." And I knew he did. He had everything under control. I realized that, very early on, and at that moment I began to strive to shake up that control, for the sole reason of seeing how he'd react to a change in his carefully laid plans.

-o-


	3. Acid

_This whole idea that Wendy is not, as out good pal Cartman would say, a hippie seems to frighten many of you. I'll be honest that it wasn't what I had originally planned when I first thought of this story, but as it started to develop I made up my mind about it. Most fics (like some of my own, I will admit) turn Wendy into an evil dictator of sorts, so why not go to the other extreme? I've gotten _myself_ interested in the way she'll turn out._

_The second little section of this chapter is third-person. Heidi does make an appearance, but third-person just works out better there. And even if it doesn't, I'm the author, so I'll do it anyway. :)_

_This update came extremely quickly because I have off from school, therefore having nothing better to do than write. Don't expect them to always be this close together._

_As always, read and review!_

_Disclaimed again._

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_Acid_

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I'd been told that no one could frustrate a person quite the way Cartman could, and I was learning just how true that statement was. A week after our lunchtime meeting and he hadn't spoken a word to me about anything. If I didn't know any better I would've assumed that he'd bailed on the whole plan, but that wasn't Cartman's style. The fact that he'd approached me on the issue was a clear sign that he intended on following through with… whatever it was the corrupt brain in his head had come up with. I still had no idea what the scheme even was. A few times I had approached him, deciding once and for all that I _would _make him talk to me. But it never worked; he'd either tell me to stop being so annoying or just blow me off completely.

In the meantime, I continued making an idiot of myself in front of Craig. And not in front of Craig, occasionally. But mostly in front of Craig. Take, for example, what happened that Thursday in math class – busy imagining a moment between myself and Craig where we would kiss for the first time, I heard Mr. Yuro finish off a question with my name. Assuming it was question about whatever we'd been going over, I answered, "x 2", figuring I could play it off as making a mistake somewhere in my calculations.

He'd asked me whether or not I would be attending the Community Service club meeting that he generally presided over on Thursday afternoons.

Or on Monday, back in chemistry where we were doing a lab which would help us determine chemical differences in bases and acids, I was shaken from my daydreams only because I had somehow managed to spill acid all over the floor. Kyle looked at me pointedly, but I think I was starting to wear on him because after a moment he just shook his head sympathetically.

"Don't worry, I'll get it," I muttered, removing my latex gloves and looking for something to mop up the liquid with. Craig turned around and gave me a small, amused smile, which ended all neural processes for a good three minutes. During this time I grabbed Babe's super-absorbent, fuzzy, almost towel-like purse and without putting new gloves on, started cleaning the mess with it. The faux-hair on the bag began to disintegrate before my eyes. The more immediate problem for me, however, was the searing pain which I felt in my hands.

I looked at them curiously, understanding slow in cutting through the thick fog which had set in my head. Keep in mind I was still feeling the aftershock of Craig's smile.

Kyle, who must've wondered why the hell I was just sitting there staring at my hands, bent down and took a look at them. "Holy _shit," _he yelped.

This snapped me out of my reverie, and I realized with a jolt that my hands were swollen and the skin on my palms was flaming red, even peeling in places. Already some shiny, angry-looking blisters had started to form, and in these spots my hands hurt even more. The overall pain seemed to triple in intensity. Tears leapt to my eyes, and I made a move to wipe them away.

A large hand seized my wrist before it got very far. Through my blurred vision, I could make out the form of Cartman, squatting in front of me.

"Do that," he said harshly, "And this –" he gestured to the gruesome state of my palms "- will be happening on your eyeballs, too." He released his grip and I lowered my arm, gazing into his eyes for more direction. He huffed impatiently. "If you want to stop it from eating through the rest of your skin, rinsing them off might be a good idea."

Oh, right. I stood up and was guided – not by Cartman, of course, who had gone back to his seat – to the nearest sink. After rinsing for 15 minutes, the teacher approached me.

"I would send you to the nurse," he said, "but they don't need more problems than they already have from students like you who don't know how to pay attention to what you're doing." He looked at me disdainfully, and I had a feeling that he hadn't forgotten about any of the other numerous incidents that I had caused in his classroom. He was probably loving the fact that I was finally being punished for my stupidity. "I have a medical kit in here that should have everything you need in it… I guess since Kyle is your lab partner he could help you-"

"I'll do it," Cartman said from behind me, causing me to jump about a foot in the air. I hadn't heard him walk up to us. The teacher frowned, suspicious of Cartman's motives, since Cartman had already established himself as the class mischief maker. After a moment, he sighed. "Fine. Eric, tell your partner to team up with Kyle for the rest of the period."

Cartman did so and retrieved the First Aid kit from one of the drawers in the teacher's desk. He directed me to the back of the room, away from everyone else, where we would have a fair amount of privacy. Despite the fact that I had washed all of the acid from my hands, they still burned like hell. Cartman roughly grabbed my right hand and inspected it, not attempting to hide the repulsion on his face. They were absolutely gross-looking – soggy from so much water exposure, puffy, almost completely covered in shiny green-yellow blisters, and any skin not blistering was raw and peeling. Mumbling incoherently under his breath, he began digging through the kit.

"Won't you need gloves?" I asked softly. If I were him there would be no way in hell I'd touch those things without some form of protection. He looked up at me with a sneer, as if such a suggestion was ridiculous to even think about. I didn't say anything more about it.

Finally discovering what he was looking for, he looked up at me. "So, how did this one come about?" he asked, opening one of the many packets of whatever he had dug out of the kit.

I sighed heavily. "Just wasn't thinking," I said. He squeezed the content of the packet onto my palm and without warning began smearing it around. His harsh press on my skin made me yelp, and he gave me an irritated look.

"Could've warned me," I grumbled. He said nothing but went back to spreading the stuff over my hands, getting occasional sharp intakes of breath out of me. Cartman, I decided, would not be good in the medical field. He was anything but gentle, and lacked any kind of sympathy for the person he was helping, which reflected to him not actually caring whether he hurt the person more or not.

"You were thinking alright," he said in a low tone, "Just not what you should've been thinking about." His eyes pointed off to the left, and, following them, my gaze landed on Craig. Immediately my cheeks colored, and when I turned back to Cartman I saw he was looking straight at me. We stared at each other for a moment; I was the first to look away.

He opened another packet of the gel and emptied that onto my right hand as well, smearing it around as he had done before. He continued this process several times, until my entire hand was coated in a thick layer of the stuff. Then Cartman reached for several gauze pads, ripping them from their wrapping until a nice pile had formed on the counter. "So," he began, pressing the first pad directly on the center of my palm, firmly enough so it would stick, "I wasn't going to launch our plan of attack for a time, but I see that necessity will… force us ahead of schedule."

"Necessity?"

"You won't be of any use to me in a coma, which you will undoubtedly put yourself in soon unless something is done right away," he said flatly.

If I could've crossed my arms I would've. "It's not _that _bad," I grumbled in protest. He squeezed down particularly hard on the hand he was dressing. I yelped loudly, drawing a couple looks from kids in the front of the room. "What the fuck, asshole?" I seethed.

"Not that bad, huh?"

"You didn't have to hurt me."

"_You _shouldn't have said something stupid," he countered. I lapsed into unhappy silence. Taking this as his cue to keep talking, he did. "Basically the plan is to gain Wendy's trust first. Getting in with Wendy is an easy way to get in with Craig."

"Do we _have _to make Wendy a key part of this?" I half-asked, half-begged.

"Yes," he answered simply.

"Couldn't we just-"

"God dammit," he almost shouted, dropping my hand into my lap. Getting his voce under control, he continued in a hoarse whisper, "Stop trying to act like you're a good person in all of this. If you really gave a shit about Wendy, you and I wouldn't be having this fucking conversation. You are just as pathetic and low as you're trying to convince yourself that you're not. What, you want to not include her so at the end you can pat yourself on the back and say, 'Gee, I sure can feel good since we didn't actually involve Wendy in the plot that's left her miserable,'?"

"I-"

"Don't waste my time with that," he said. "And don't both bother trying to convince yourself of it, either. In the end, it won't be a deciding factor on whether you can live with yourself anyway." He picked up the hand he had thrown earlier and kept wrapping it in gauze.

Speechless did not accurately describe how I felt after that. Done with the gauze, Cartman grabbed the white medical tape and began methodically enveloping the entire affected area with it. "After you've formed a thick enough friendship with her, you'll move on to Craig. First just talking, then maybe some flirting… whatever it is you chicks do to get your guys. You'll have to learn how to keep your head when you talk to him, though," he smiled wryly. "Then, we throw the knockout punch. Something that will make Craig yours then and there, on the spot. That's easy enough to do. I'm pretty sure I've already got that all figured out anyway."

"…That's it?" I asked, partially scandalized. It seemed simple enough, too simple for all the mystery Cartman had put into it. "That's the master plan? Just make nice with Wendy and steal her boyfriend. I could've thought of that," I scoffed.

I expected him to defend his idea, or at least explain what 'special something' this plan had that would make it not quite so simplistic. But all he did was shrug. "Everything else will come out as needed," he said ambiguously. I sank into silent thought, brooding over everything he'd told me and wondering why he was being such a prick about it all. A spike of pain interrupted the dull throbbing of my left hand, and I looked down at it, shocked to find that Cartman was already beginning to wrap it in layers of gauze padding. I really hadn't even noticed him rubbing on the gel.

Just as class was letting out he finished the job, and I had to admit it was a nice one. I was almost proud of my bandaged appendages, kind of like they were some sort of battle wound. It looked pretty intense, at any rate. "Thanks for… this," I said awkwardly, lifting up my hands.

He shook his head, "I needed to corner you somehow. Preferably before you managed to blow yourself up. I can't believe you almost wiped your eyes…" I smiled meekly and he allowed a quick, calculating smile. He watched me carefully for a couple of seconds before turning and going to his desk, gathering his things, and leaving.

I went over to my desk, realizing with a sinking stomach that I had no way of transporting my belongings to the next class. I didn't have to worry about it for long.

"Need a hand?" Kyle asked from behind me. I spun around and smiled at him. "Yeah, that'd be great."

He eyed my wrapped hands. "Nice of Cartman to do that," he said simply. I shrugged awkwardly. I knew Kyle was curious about what Cartman was up to. If I had a history with Cartman like Kyle did, I'd probably have been curious about his every move too.

He looked back up into my eyes. "Why?" he asked.

"I don't… because he was feeling generous?" I said lamely. Kyle shook his head energetically. "No, no way," he said. "Cartman doesn't… he isn't…" he tried to find the right words to describe whatever he was thinking and either couldn't or didn't want to say them to me.

"Just… just be careful with him, okay? Cartman is a user. There's no other way to put it. He uses people. No matter how close you think you might be with him, no matter what you go through or what he says… just, don't fall for it, alright? Don't trust him. I don't want to see him… to see you…" he sighed, frustrated, and picked my books up off my desk.

"Wow. Nice to see how you really feel, Kyle," Cartman said icily from the door. He seemed to have returned. Kyle froze, then frowned deeply.

"What're you doing here, fatass?" Kyle asked, just as coldly.

"Well, seeing as how I realized I have the next class with Heidi here, I figured I could help get her stuff to class," Cartman explained slowly, like Kyle was stupid and would have trouble following along. Kyle's fists clenched and a mixture of fury and hot suspicion arose in his features. He walked straight up to Cartman, and I was terrified that he was going to punch him in the face. If those two started fighting, I might as well have not even been there. I virtually had no hands, I wouldn't be very effective at breaking the thing up. But Kyle just pressed my books into Cartman's arms, staring into the larger boy's eyes for a few moments before leaving the room.

Cartman smiled to himself as Kyle left, saying something to himself that wasn't loud enough for me to catch. In the hallway, though, Kyle's voice yelled out, "Shut the fuck up about my religion, ass banger!"

Amazing. Simply amazing. They both might've killed me if I said it, but those two had a bond with each other, and it was different than, but second to only the one Stan and Kyle had. I didn't care what anyone else argued, it was absolutely there.

Cartman turned to me. "Well?" he asked sourly. I shook my head, smiling. "After you," I responded.

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It was about 9:00 at night, give or take few minutes. Eric Cartman was, predictably, sitting on his couch, chomping away at some snacks that his mother always kept in good supply in their household and watching a years old cartoon that he'd argue any day of the week was still the best show on television. Cartman was not one to be ensnared in the idiocy that brought so many of his age to worship bad MTV reality shows or any of those dime-a-dozen series which Fox, ABC, and CBS seemed to pump out weekly.

The doorbell rang. Cartman didn't even glance in the direction of the door, but focused intently on the television screen. He had no idea who it was but he did know what the person was most likely there for, and he'd be damned if he was the one to let some 40 year old married dude into his house just so the guy could screw his mom through the night. Cartman may have defended his mom to anyone else, but he wasn't stupid. He knew what went on; how could he not when he slept right down the hall?

The doorbell rang again. "Mom, he's here!" Cartman screamed. There was no reply. "Mom, door!" The doorbell rang a third time, and Cartman realized that his mom had left about 2 hours before to go clubbing or whatever it was they did with some of her old whorish friends. Cartman gave the door a hard look, willing the guy to go away. _She's not here, _he thought, hoping the message would telepathically reach him.

It didn't. The doorbell rang yet again.

Grumbling, Cartman heaved himself off the couch and made his way to the door. Yanking it open, he began irritably, "Listen, she went out to – what are _you_ doing here?" Cartman was not surprised easily. Call it a knack for knowing what's going on or intelligence in general, it was simply a difficult thing to do. Heidi standing there on his doorstep, though? Yeah, that surprised him a bit.

Heidi didn't verbally explain her presence. She just lifted up her bandaged hands, palms facing Cartman, and sniffed. At first, Cartman didn't get it. But after a moment he noticed the red and yellow stains that had made it all the way through the gauze and had bled through the tape. Cartman was too confused to be aggravated with her, so he let her into the house without any comments voicing his nonexistent displeasure. She hesitated just inside the door, watching him close it, turn off the TV, and move the bowl of snacks from its seat on the couch to the table.

"Come on, we'll go upstairs," he grunted. She nodded and followed behind him as he led the way to the upstairs bathroom. After 10 minutes, Cartman was frowning down at her then unwrapped hands. And they were a mess.

Half of the blisters had opened, and bloody pus oozed from the gaping holes. He shook his head, "You're hands are going to be so scarred after this it'll look like your permanently wearing pink gloves. The hell did you do?"

Her cheeks reddened. "I just tripped is all… put my hands out to catch myself…" Cartman winced, then shuddered, then laughed. Heidi frowned. "I don't see anything particularly funny about this."

"I do."

Her frown deepened.

"Just rinse this shit off first," he said, referring to the disgusting fluid seeping from her hands. She put her hands in the sink and did so. "Then we'll just make sure it can't get infected and wrap it again," he said, removing a brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide from drawer below the sink.

Her face froze in an expression of apprehension. "We… have to use that?" she asked tentatively, terrified of the answer. Cartman was about to reply 'yes' when he heard his mother enter the house. "Eric, I'm home," her voice floated up the stairs.

"'Kay mom," he answered, then added, "Heidi's here!"

"Oh, my little boy has so many friends. If you need anything just ask," she replied. Cartman rolled his eyes and uncapped the bottle, gesturing for her to place one of her hands over the sink. She sighed as he poured some onto the injuries, and gasped as her hands were instantly covered in burning white foam.

"Shit!" she screamed, the hand shaking slightly. "Oh my, God, Cartman… that fucking hurts!"

"Stop being a baby," he grumbled, pouring a little more on. She moaned loudly.

"Poopsiekins, do you need a condom up there?" Liane asked innocently from downstairs.

"Wha- I- _fucking no mom!" _Cartman answered, enraged. "Okay hon, tell me if you change your mind," Liane replied, dreamily unaware of the many, many things so wrong with that question.

A half hour later, Cartman was almost done wrapping tape around the second hand. They'd gone through the whole process in near silence, Cartman not bothering to make small talk and Heidi too preoccupied with the state of her hands to care to attempt to do so herself. Suddenly, Cartman started talking, "You're probably going to need to get this redone fairly often now that some of them burst… I'm not going to do this every damn night," he said. "Get it done in school… it'd be a good excuse to get out of class," he gave her a look that she couldn't quite decipher. "Why'd you come here anyway?" he asked bluntly.

"I guess… I guess because you did it the first time so I knew I could trust you," she answered, sounding unsure of herself.

"You could've asked your parents. Or anyone, really. There are 6 people whose houses are between yours and mine, you could've stopped at any one of them," he said quietly, more like he was talking to himself so he could try to figure it out on his own.

Heidi started to speak and stopped. Finally she shrugged and said, "I don't know. It was just the first place I thought of. I never even thought of going anywhere else, or I probably would have."

"…Yeah, you probably would've," Cartman echoed, standing up and gesturing down to her hands. "It's done."

"Yeah," she said awkwardly. They made their way in silence downstairs to the front door. "Well… thanks," Heidi said, hesitating. She gave a small smile and stepped out the front door.

"No problem," he muttered. She smiled again and turned, jogging down to the sidewalk and quickly out of sight. Cartman shut the door and returned to the couch. He reached for the bowl but sighed, realizing he wasn't hungry. He tried to settle down and watch the show, but he couldn't do that either. With a frustrated noise he clicked the television off and just sat there, thinking. Reflecting, almost, on what had just happened.

He reached the conclusion that it had been one of the more random and unexplainable things that had happened to him recently. And definitely surprising.

-o-

_I love Cartman. And Heidi. And Kyle, too. And this chapter, even. Happy sigh._


	4. Girl Theory

_Awesome reviews again everybody. Sorry for the long wait, but fucking exams and all… not much BS to start out with today, so let's get to it, shall we?_

_Disclaimed once more._

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_Girl Theory_

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Have you ever woken up feeling like you did something horribly wrong the night before, but can't for all you're worth remember what it was? That was what I felt like that morning. I went through the first half of my morning activities dreading when the time would come that I would eventually remember whatever the hell I had done. I knew myself well enough to assume that, no matter what it was, it was probably highly embarrassing and just as damaging to my already scathed reputation.

It didn't hit me until, as I was attempting to do my hair, I screamed in angry fury at the fact that I couldn't twist the hairpiece around the bun I was trying to form. I looked resentfully down at my bandaged hands, and _WHAM._

_Last night… oh, Christ. _My cheeks turned crimson as the flood gates opened and everything burst forth, and for 20 minutes I sat on my bed and relived the whole experience. _Well, _I tried to rationalize, _you were obviously a little out of it. And he did a good job of it before, so why not ask him to do it again?_

But to run all the way to his house, late at night, no explanation or prior warning?

_Like I said, a little out of it._

By the time I was supposed to leave for school, I'd decided that the whole thing really was no big deal. No big deal at all. I could think about it with only twinges of regret and embarrassment, and I only physically blushed when I thought about how penetrating his gaze was when he looked straight into my eyes. Which, for Cartman, was not a big shift from normality. He was just a penetrating kind of guy.

I cringed at that. It sounded… kind of dirty. Then I giggled at myself. _Get your mind out of the gutter._

"Maybe," someone drawled from my bedroom doorway, "you really have gone crazy."

I physically jumped at least 2 feet into the air. Trying to play it off, I muttered, "Since when has that ever even been up for debate?" scuffing the toe of my shoe on the ground.

"Point," he said with a nod, and I couldn't fight back the small smile that appeared on my face. Cartman watched me for a moment without speaking. Getting slightly annoyed, I asked, "What are you doing here?"

"Just figured I could return the favor from last night. Got nothing better to do right now, anyway." I flushed. I'd been hoping maybe we could just avoid the topic of last night. "Besides, we have to discuss today's action."

I paused, then gave him a suspiciously quizzical look. "What do you mean, 'today's action'?"

"Well, since time is such a terrible thing to waste, I decided we're going to put our plan into motion."

"What plan?!" I half-screamed, utterly nervous and pissed that he'd decided to just move things along as fast as he damn well pleased. "We don't even have a real _plan!"_

He rolled his eyes in impatience, an I-am-so-above-this look passing over him. "Rome wasn't built in a day, Heidi, nor will your friendship with the hippie-ho be," – Wendy, I assumed he was referring to. This coming from a guy claiming to like her? My red flag was raised, alright. "You have to start on her immediately if we want to have this done within a reasonable amount of time." The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Obviously. I was already finding that Cartman was very rarely not sensible.

When it came to this sort of stuff, anyway.

"So how am I supposed to do that?" I asked him.

He shrugged angrily, "How the hell am I supposed to know? Just do whatever it is you chicks do to make nice and get it done!" His complaints dissolved into inaudible grumbles. I didn't mind so much and slumped back down onto my bed. My chest heaved in a great, loud sigh, and silence reigned for a bit. After a while, I noticed that he was looking at me strangely.

"What?" I asked irritably.

"Nothing. Besides that we're currently…" he glanced around my room for a moment, eyes finally landing on the clock at my bedside, "…15 minutes into first period by now."

I shot straight up, leaping off the messy bed and cursing loudly as I bolted around the room grabbing random items and tossing them violently into my bag. Assuming that I had everything I needed for the day, I ran from the room and took the steps two at a time, narrowly avoiding losing my footing and tumbling to the bottom.

"Killing yourself will create some annoying setbacks in our plan, you know," Cartman commented from behind me. I gave him a dirty look, responding, "Why aren't you in more of a rush? We're definitely going to miss first period… maybe even half of second. I'm probably going to get two detentions, which will just be fucking wonderful because we've made plans for virtually all this week after school…"

"Who's we?" he asked, breezing around the subject of being late for school.

I waved my hand impatiently as I yanked two cereal bars from the closet, tossing one at him. "You know… me and the girls."

"Who's the girls?" he persisted.

"Goddammit Cartman don't be stupid. Red, Bebe, Powder, Lola, Teresa… everyone else we hang out with. The girls."

He pondered this for a moment. "What about Millie and her friends?" I wrinkled my nose habitually.

"What do you care about her? Unless you're wondering about the whole thing with your mom and her dad, because I'm pretty sure –" He silenced me with one of the deadliest looks I'd ever seen him give. That was pretty scary, considering I'd seen him give Kyle some bad ones.

Going back to Millie, I wasn't quite sure where the divide between them and us had come into play, all I knew was that it had. There wasn't much more to it besides the fact that we didn't really like each other, thank God. I didn't think I could handle the stress of being in some kind of popularity war with a bunch of people I didn't really give two shits about on top of everything else that was going on.

"We don't really talk to them," was my quiet answer. Cartman lapsed into another break of silence, and we left the house. It occurred to me how strange this was: I was walking to school with Eric Cartman. Not exactly something I had seen myself doing… ever, actually.

"You have to get Wendy to go with you," he said suddenly. My jaw dropped in surprise.

"I can't… she can't just _come_ with us!" I replied, still shocked. I could already tell that was not the answer he wanted to hear, and he wasn't going to just accept it. That would be much too simple for his tastes.

"And why the hell not?" he demanded.

"It just…" I stopped, feeling the confusion come over my face unabated. Cartman had donned his signature sarcastic expression; I could feel him aiming it at me. Why couldn't Wendy just come with us? All the girls liked her – if they weren't in full awe of her, that was. We'd all done stuff together when we were younger… although that wasn't exactly a reason to hang out with her now – look at Millie, we'd been friends with her back then, too. But then, it wasn't a reason _not_ to hang out with her, either.

"I guess there isn't really a reason…" I said slowly. Cartman gave a smug smile. "…she just can't." This took a moment to work its way through his head, and a shell of the smile he had just given clung to him like a parasite. "I mean, I guess it's kind of like Murphy's Law or… Atomic Theory, or something like that," inside me, the sane part of me shook her head sadly, because diarrhea-of-the-mouth Heidi had taken over, "One of those things in life that can't really be explained. It just is. Atoms have protons, neutrons, and electrons, and girls… can't invite other girls to go shopping with them if they aren't really 'friends.'" Air quotes, take a bow.

"So what would that be officially referred to as, Girl Theory?" he asked sarcastically.

"…Maybe."

"…You done, then?" he asked, flatly this time.

I frowned down at the ground, wondering where that spiel had come from. "Think so," I muttered distractedly.

"So I expect Wendy will be joining you guys when you go do… whatever?"

"Absolutely," I said, surprising myself.

"Good," he replied.

--------

Sometimes I was under the impression that if I could only turn idiot once a day. After that having been proven wrong several times, I had no idea why this was. Red suggested some kind of advanced form of self-denial once, which, though shooting the idea down in front of her, had bothered me as a possibility ever since.

As I strode to the office in order to obtain a late pass for second period, (alone, that was; Cartman had opted just to go to class. I think he just enjoyed pissing off his teachers, and coming in late without a pass was a simple way to do it.) I ran into the person who prevented me from properly functioning like no other before him.

"Hey, Heidi," Craig said with a simple nod of his head. I froze. Like, actually stopped moving, froze. He stopped, too, looking pleasantly quizzical.

"Uh… hey, Craig," I responded. I continued to stand there.

"You… going somewhere?" he asked.

"Oh! Yeah, just going to the office," remembering this seemed to bring some power to my legs again, and I slowly resumed my trip down the hallway. Falling into step beside me, he kept talking. "Aw, yea, me too. Have to pick up some forms for baseball in the spring… I don't know why I'm still into that sport. Most of the other guys dropped it years ago." He looked over at me. "Why are you heading there?"

"Late pass," I muttered, and it would've been a perfectly acceptable answer. But I kept going. "Cartman came over and I didn't realize what time it was –"

"Cartman?" he cut me off, and I could see his lips twitch in disdain as he began to speak. They were nice lips, too, kind of small, but an adorable pink color that made them seem so kiss-

"Heidi? You okay?" he interrupted. I nodded enthusiastically, which seemed to put him off a bit, but repeated what he had just said. "Just wondering what _Cartman _was doing at your house… fat fuck," he spat.

I had to fight myself to keep from saying that he was at my house brainstorming a way that would most effectively separate Craig from his girlfriend. Because that was just what came to mind. Intensely proud for being able to control myself, I let what came next float out of my mouth without much thought, "Oh, he was just checking on me… that whole thing that happened in chemistry yesterday."

Craig glanced down at the injury, eyes widening slightly when he saw the extent of the damage, but not commenting on it. "Doesn't sound very much like Cartman," he said in a low voice. I didn't support or debate this fact; I hardly registered that he had said anything at all.

We arrived at the office, and I received my pass from a disapproving old secretary after getting a bit of a lecture about the importance of being timely. The only thing I pulled from it was that the woman was obviously miserable and extremely angry with the world, as it had done nothing with her life besides turn her into an office secretary at a small-town high school. I decided I would probably be kind of pissed off, too, and gave the woman a sympathetic smile. She scowled at me and, after signing the pass, began grumbling about 'Today's generation'.

Waving goodbye to Craig, who was struggling to obtain what he wanted from another secretary who didn't speak very good English, I ran out of the room and hustled to my second period class. I was just about bubbling over with excitement because I had had what very much resembled a real conversation with Craig. It was weird; he just seemed a smidgen easier to talk to. I was flying high when I strolled into the classroom. There, Red was waiting for me.

"Where've you been?" she asked me after I settled into my seat behind her. I gave her a vague description of my morning, and her reaction was very similar to Craig's: "Cartman?" with a contortion of her face thrown in.

I rolled my eyes and brought my attention back to the front of the classroom. The teacher didn't seem to be appreciating the fact that I had not only waltzed in late, but was now making no effort to even listen to her lectures.

Whatever. Western Civilization was boring anyway.

Throughout much of the day, I pondered ways to somehow convince Wendy to be friends with me. It sounded simple, it probably _was _simple, but I was drawing a serious blank. It was a predicament to me like no other, and the first, perhaps most challenging part of it was figuring out how to approach her on the matter. Should I just sit at her lunch table and start chatting? Walk up to her in the hallway? Maybe send her a text message? The awkwardness that would inevitably follow whatever I did to avail myself to her made me squirm.

To understand, one must first come to terms with what Wendy Testaburger was in South Park High School. She was strikingly beautiful, with inky black hair the likes of which caused jealousy unbounded from someone the likes of me, who was unfortunate enough to inherit hair of the mousy brown variety, and she had exotic green eyes the shade of celery. She was extremely smart and an unnaturally nice person. There was just no one that Wendy truly didn't like, and if there was, she smiled at them just as much as she would the next person. The weird thing about Wendy was that she didn't have a best friend. She had friends, sure, and I'm fairly certain she had once been best friends with Bebe, but somehow, that had fallen apart.

Actually, Wendy didn't even have many people that she could refer to as _close_ friends. The only person she was ever really seen with, doing something other than having polite, friendly conversation with was Craig. And Craig was – as much as I despised to say – her boyfriend, so he really didn't count as a friend.

And, somehow, Wendy Testaburger had elevated herself to the most popular girl in school. Don't ask me how, because it was a mystery to me, too. How did a nice, smart, albeit beautiful girl with no friends become the most popular, envied person in the school? Obviously it was a different kind of popularity, than, say, a cheerleader with 34,564 best friends had, but it was undeniably popularity. I had no idea. It was part of the mystery that traveled wherever Wendy went.

So how could I just become close to this girl who was well liked, cool, and close to no one but the guy I wanted to take from her?

Turned out I wouldn't have to think about it much, after all. And although it's never been proven, I refuse to believe Cartman didn't have a hand in it somehow, because it was _just_ simple and completely incidental enough for him to come up with.

It was getting close to the end of the day, and at the last second my math teacher had cancelled class, so I was left to aimlessly wander the halls for 35 minutes. After doing just that for 10 minutes, I made up my mind to visit the girls locker room and get my gym clothes. They hadn't been washed in a while and I was starting to worry that they were the source of the new funky smell that had taken up residence in the changing area.

I entered the gym, waving enthusiastically at Red, who was changed and ready to go do physical activities (she had gym that period). She scowled and flipped me off, and I walked into the locker room chuckling to myself about it. My locker was on the opposite end of the room, in one of the very last rows of the tiny, cubical lockers. Seriously, the things only had an area of about 1 square foot, a cause of eternal complaint from us girls who wouldn't have minded some extra space to store our belongings.

Reaching the appropriate row, I made a left and, for the second time that day, froze. Because there was Wendy Testaburger, tapping a manicured nail on her chin and rummaging through her locker with her other hand, occasionally throwing something into the massive bag she'd brought with her. She must've sensed someone standing there and turned her head, and as her eyes landed on me her face broke out into a smile. "Hey Heidi," she said pleasantly, her smooth voice echoing in the otherwise empty locker room.

"Hi Wendy," I replied. After standing there for an extra second I made my way to my locker, which was on the right side of the wall of lockers rather than the left, like Wendy's. I stood in front of it, trying desperately to come up with the combination while at the same trying desperately to come up with something to start a conversation. At least it wasn't too awkward yet – Wendy had gone back to digging stuff out of her gray metal cube which bought me some thinking time.

"So, um," I started, figuring I might as well just throw something out there, "what'd you think of that English exam?" She was in my English class, and we had just taken an evaluation-type thingy that supposedly measured our comprehension of the book we had just finished reading.

She shrugged, "I didn't find anything on it particularly difficult, so I guess I'm okay."

I groaned. "In other words, you totally aced it." She shrugged, but smiled. "You don't know how lucky you are to be smart. I basically reread that whole fucking book and I still think I failed it." This was true, depressingly enough.

Wendy didn't respond, and for a while I didn't think she was going to. But all of the sudden she spun around and "Did you write a summary?" burst from her lips as if she had been trying to hold it in and failed.

"What?" I answered, confused as hell.

"A summary. Of the book. Did you write one?" she clarified.

"No… oh, shit, did we have to?" I asked, now truly panicked. What I did not need right now was to not hand in some kind of major assignment and wind up failing English, or something.

"No, no, nothing like that." I visibly calmed. "But I think it really helps me understand what I'm reading, plus it's an excellent study guide because you don't have all the unimportant details in there that you would be trying to memorize if you were just studying out of the book."

I figured that, with just a little more friendly conversation like that, an invitation to come hang out after school some day would be perfectly natural. I began to calm down – it wouldn't be nearly as hard as I thought it would be.

"I guess that's a pretty good idea… I'm so lazy though, my summary would probably be about 2 sentences so I could get it over with and I'd just wind up screwing myself," I said with a laugh. That was, also, true, and I suddenly felt a familiar pang of envy. Damn Wendy, doing something that anyone else could easily do but are all just too lazy to do it. That was so like her.

This time, it was Wendy's turn to laugh. "Oh, I know how that is. You have no idea how hard it is to try and convince Craig to do anything school related… I almost think he would just drop out if there wasn't someone there to keep on him about it."

The smile I formulated then was so fake that I'm surprised my face didn't crack in half. A fit of insane jealousy ripped through me, and I quickly spat out, "Well, nice talking to you gotta go bye," while turning to leave.

"Wait," she said, and for a split second… I don't know, I thought somehow she'd made some sort of connection and had found out about my Craigly desires. I rapidly turned to face her, terror on my face. "Um…" she seemed confused by my reaction, "didn't you need to get something out of your locker…?"

Oh… right. My face returned to a near normal expression, and I realized that I had never opened my locker. I'd just stood there talking to her the whole time, and now I was taking off. I remembered the clothes I had come in to get.

Embarrassment turned my cheeks pink. "Right," I muttered, and turned back to the small locker, opening it, taking out the articles inside, and shutting it with a resounding click. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, imagining that with it would go my irrational jealous dislike of the girl behind me. I turned to face her, and I think there was something reflecting defeat in my eyes. "Wendy… would you want to maybe… hang out after school tomorrow?" I thought for sure she was going to reply negatively. Why would she do otherwise?

This caught her completely off guard. Surprise was evident as she replied, "Well… Craig and I were maybe planning on going out sometime tomorrow…"

Yup, she was nicely trying to squirm her way out of it. Oh, well, I gave it a shot. "Oh damn, well, I sure wouldn't want you to cancel any plans you may have had –"

She shook her head suddenly. "No, it's cool, I'll be there."

"Are-are you sure?" I stammered out. This time I was the surprised one.

"Totally. Where're you guys going anyway?"

"Just the mall. We'll probably just chill… I don't even know if anyone has money to buy stuff anyway. We went on a big shopping trip not too long ago, so it's kind of up to their parents or whatever." This was a disguised way of saying that the wealthier girls would be packing daddy's credit card, while we lowly middle-class urchins watched, cursing the God that sent us to live with regularly-paid mortals.

She smiled knowingly. "Okay, cool."

I nodded. "I'll… see you later, then?"

"Sounds like a plan." I left, and she went back to whatever the hell she'd been taking out of that locker.

I thought, since the day had taken such a positive turn, that perhaps the rest of it would be smooth sailing. No such luck. Last period, getting ready to leave, with Ms. Beucher setting up some refreshments on the side table for some sort of impromptu in-school baby shower for a pregnant math teacher. Needless to say, as Craig walked into the room to ask her a question, I got so caught up in him that I… walked into the table, knocking out one of its legs, and watched in horror as the collective baking efforts of a few dozen teachers came crashing down in a magnificent amount of noise.

It was actually pretty funny, though, because as Ms. Beucher gaped in indescribable feeling – probably ranging in the horrified/pissed-off enough to kill someone neighborhood, Cartman swooped in. Just as, "It's… ruined…" leaked from her mouth, Cartman bent down and took a huge scoop out of the main dish – a giant cake with "Congratulations!" written in pink icing across the face – with his bare hands. Until then, the cake had suffered minor damage, with only two cracks maiming its otherwise still good-enough-to-eat surface. Now, though… I didn't think anyone would be touching it.

"Now," he said dramatically, "it's ruined."

Ms. Beucher made an odd squeaking noise. Pausing, Cartman bent down again and picked up a chocolate chip cookie, one of the few out of the 3 dozen there that had not been bathed in orange soda during the collapse. He tossed it at me, and I caught it out of surprise. "For the cereal bar," he said with a sly smile.

I laughed and we left together, Cartman feasting upon the large piece of cake that he'd swiped. Kyle scoffed at him in the hallway and made some kind of comment involving Cartman's weight, which prompted him to fling a section of the icing-laden cake at the other's head. Stan and Kenny, who had been walking with Kyle, laughed heartily, and Kenny even skipped over to Cartman's side and broke off a piece for himself, somehow dodging Cartman's swatting hands afterwards.

It wasn't until about an hour later that I realized his little show had made me completely forget about Craig. It was like he was just another person in the background, not the boy whose mere presence generally dictated my behavior. Weird.

-o-

_So… R&R. God damn this took forever to write. I know you don't like waiting for long updates, but it's not any better for me than it is for you. After a certain amount of time I just want to get it done, and I have to fight the urge to just force it out. Anyway, I go back to school for 2 weeks after Thanksgiving, but then I'm off for like a month for winter break, so there will be plenty of update time then._


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